This started in another thread, but I really think it deserves its own.

Basically, I'd like GW to consider creating a framework for User Objects that will allow the community to create a lot of fluff that doesn't impact the game directly, rather than having to wait for the developers to find time do create fun little things like Dice.

At their simplest, User Objects should have a user-defined Name, a Text Description, and a list of Methods that can be activated with optional parameters. The Methods would generate Emotes that make it obvious which User Object is being used.

For example:

I type /createUserObject to create a new User Object with Unique ID "CC4317DBD2804E06E04400306EF46656" (a GUID). I am immediately prompted to provide a Name and a Text Description. I enter "Ivory Dice" as the Name, and "A pair of ivory 6-sided dice" as the Text Description.

"Ivory Dice" now exist in my inventory. I should be able to Trade or Sell them just like I would any other item in my inventory.

I would suggest a Display Method for all User Objects that generates an Emote like "Nihimon displays Ivory Dice for all to see." "Ivory Dice" should be a link that displays the Unique ID, the Name, and the Text Description as a tooltip when any player hovers over it.

I should be able to add a Roll Method and define the resulting Emote so that it looks something like "Nihimon rolls Ivory Dice: 7".

The devs spend a little effort building a generally robust Emote system, with special keywords that can be replaced by standard things like your target's name, race, gender, role, etc. and a few things like a random number generator. The players can then build on this system by creating interesting items that have absolutely no real impact on the world or other players, but that can be used as props.

Another example could be a User Object I create named "Nihimon's Mojo". Perhaps some bread-making assassin manages to steal my mojo from me, and he is then able to display it to all his friends to show how cool he is. I then have a lot of fun trying to steal it back from him.

This makes me think that User Objects should only be allowed to be kept in Inventory - that is, you shouldn't be allowed to place them in secure storage. When another player loots your corpse, in addition to the normal effects on normal gear, they should get their pick of your User Objects.

The whole point is to allow the community to do the tedious work of building lots of cool things like dice and cards without taking up the extremely valuable time of the developers.

1. If players have the ability to make items, there will be things like "Goblin Baby Diaper" "1957 Chevy" and "Your Mom's Virtue" will be littering the markets/vendors. It's giving way to much power to the player, imo, and if that power exists it WILL be abused.

This abuse is unique to this system, and not possible with 'normal' items.

This could be countered with oversight by the Devs on all items created, but at that point it's causing them to have to review everything, which takes up all their time this idea is supposed to save, making it pointless.

2. People trying to 'trick' other players by making 'emote' items with real item names/descriptions for the expressed purpose of ripping people off.

This is unique to this system, and not possible with 'normal' items.

This could be countered by not allowing these items to be made with names of pre-existing dev-made items, but with a special character here, or a extra space there, even that can be gotten around. This would simply make problems for the player economy that doesn't need to be there.

And is that abuse unique to this system and not possible with "normal" items?

I can't quite fathom any, I'm overall not a fan of the idea, (as a whole I don't see much purpose in implementation of non-functional items, nor the implimentation of creating them). But no, the only way I could see that as harmful is in a universal auction house system, in which when you are trying to search for iron ore, your search results are bogged ot heck by

Iron Ored
Iron Orek
Iron Orea

Etc... etc...

Of course that whole issue is null in void without such a system that store listings are separate, and thus when someone organizes a store in a way too obnoxious to find what you want, you don't shop there.

Would you be the only producer of ivory dice, or could other players make their own ivory dice?

Anyone could make any item they wanted, but each item has a Unique ID. So the Ivory Dice I make can be distinguished from the Ivory Dice someone else makes.

Sparrow wrote:

Seems like the database would get cluttered by people making all sorts of things in either case.

Disk Space is cheap, but ultimately the people of Goblinworks would make the call on how much space they'd want to allocate for something like this. I wouldn't object to items automatically being removed from the system if they aren't used for a while.

Sparrow wrote:

... what is to prevent people from introducing their own non-functional instruments?

Why would you want to prevent this?

Sparrow wrote:

How much work and/or money is associated with the game maintaining this database of infinite items?

I don't understand the actual limitations that the developers would have to deal with. I work with databases for a living, and I know how easy it would be for me to store a hundred million items and their associated methods. What I don't know is whether or not the folks at Goblinworks would consider this a reasonable use of space.

1. If players have the ability to make items, there will be things like "Goblin Baby Diaper" "1957 Chevy" and "Your Mom's Virtue" will be littering the markets/vendors.

That's a valid concern. However, if the system pulls the names and descriptions from an external server, and only characters who have registered with that server see the descriptions that come from it, then that solves this problem. There are benefits to GW hosting a universal service, but there are pitfalls as well.

However, I would point out that this isn't really unique to this system because even without this system, I'll be able to Emote "Nihimon puts Your Mom's Virtue in a Goblin Baby Diaper and drives off in his 1957 Chevy".

Kard Warstein wrote:

2. People trying to 'trick' other players by making 'emote' items with real item names/descriptions for the expressed purpose of ripping people off.

This is a real problem as well, and something that needs to be addressed. That's why I suggested using special borders and special surrounding text to make clear that it's a User Object.

However, this isn't really unique to this system either. MUDs had to deal with the same problem. The MUD I played put an asterisk in front of all emotes so that it was easy to distinguish between the system telling you "Nihimon gives you 100 coins" and me emoting "*Nihimon gives you 100 coins".

I understand, and I'm not going to be upset or surprised if the devs decide this isn't worth it.

However, I see a huge potential in it for players to create Performance RP Props. I think it would take a minimum of developer effort. And I think it would empower the community to be creative in making things that increase player interaction by giving the players more interesting ways to interact.

SWG had something like this and it was great you could make little items and the game stored them as "name" and then a file ref number so you could make dice which did take resources but it was piddling amounts and every who made them could name them something different but to the game they were all this one item that the devs made. Me and a buddy used to give out them and data pads as quest items to noobs and make them run all over the Force's black space. At the end they would get some nice noob gear a friend of ours crafted. It was great fun and people didn't abuse it much.

1. If players have the ability to make items, there will be things like "Goblin Baby Diaper" "1957 Chevy" and "Your Mom's Virtue" will be littering the markets/vendors.

That's a valid concern. However, if the system pulls the names and descriptions from an external server, and only characters who have registered with that server see the descriptions that come from it, then that solves this problem. There are benefits to GW hosting a universal service, but there are pitfalls as well.

However, I would point out that this isn't really unique to this system because even without this system, I'll be able to Emote "Nihimon puts Your Mom's Virtue in a Goblin Baby Diaper and drives off in his 1957 Chevy".

Yes you could emote that, but you wouldn't be able to flood a vendor with 5000 of them, or mail one to everyone on the server, etc. Items and text are different, we're not in MUD days anymore.

Quote:

Kard Warstein wrote:

2. People trying to 'trick' other players by making 'emote' items with real item names/descriptions for the expressed purpose of ripping people off.

This is a real problem as well, and something that needs to be addressed. That's why I suggested using special borders and special surrounding text to make clear that it's a User Object.

However, this isn't really unique to this system either. MUDs had to deal with the same problem. The MUD I played put an asterisk in front of all emotes so that it was easy to distinguish between the system telling you "Nihimon gives you 100 coins" and me emoting "*Nihimon gives you 100 coins".

I used to code MUDS, and understand the principle of what your attempting, and in a MUD environment it works great. I loved seeing what players invented through that system. But this isn't a MUD, and the differences between a purely text based system and a graphic driven system make them completely different creatures. Lots of great things about old games die with the genre, as they are genre specific.

Some ideas from there do work great though, and I love your suggestion of using differnt font/text/ansi to determine the difference between a real and player-made item. This would cancel out that fear of mine, for the most part I believe. But as this would be generating actual items, not just text, the meat of the problem still persists.

Yes you could emote that, but you wouldn't be able to flood a vendor with 5000 of them, or mail one to everyone on the server, etc.

You're right, and I would have no objections whatsoever if they could only be traded face-to-face.

However, players will be able to flood a vendor with 5,000 of "normal" items, and they'll be able to mail a "normal" item to everyone on the server, etc. So, again, those aren't really problems that are unique to this system.

Yes they will be able to do that, but it would take a lot of time and money and effort to accomplish. 'normal' items need to be crafted with materials that take time or resources to acquire, and the crafting itself takes time. If you don't craft, you have to either buy the items costing you money, or you have to spend the time to go out and retrieve them yourself.

player-made items, all it would take is a macro script of various triggers to create an infinite number of items instantly, and flood the game with them just as fast.

One takes effort and time and resources to accomplish, one any douchebag with a new character can do. See the difference?

Yes, I do. And I appreciate you making the effort to engage this seriously.

I think if the items can only be traded face-to-face, and only show up on a corpse if you explicitly look for them (by clicking a Show User Objects buttton, for example), then that would probably alleviate the problem.

I also wouldn't object to making it take time and resources to create. It could even be a Crafted item.

Yes they will be able to do that, but it would take a lot of time and money and effort to accomplish. 'normal' items need to be crafted with materials that take time or resources to acquire, and the crafting itself takes time. If you don't craft, you have to either buy the items costing you money, or you have to spend the time to go out and retrieve them yourself.

player-made items, all it would take is a macro script of various triggers to create an infinite number of items instantly, and flood the game with them just as fast.

One takes effort and time and resources to accomplish, one any douchebag with a new character can do. See the difference?

Well the thing I do have to point out here, is what market? The persons personal store will have 5000 random crap items? If people don't want it, they won't buy it. I don't envision NPCs buying and reselling player items... So we aren't talking about someone flooding "The market" we are talking about someone flooding, their own personal store, and even that could be limited by X items can be created per character per day, up to a max of 100 can exist at any given time, after that one has to destroy old ones to make new ones.

Again I consider this idea a waste of development resources, IMO the development time would be better spent adding a for fun card/dice games for people to sit around a table in game and play for some immersive roleplaying. If the developers have time to mechanically support anything in the something that is for fun to boost the RP side of the game.

But in-spite of opposing the motion in general, I can't make any sense of this "market" that is going to be flooded. You seem to be imagining NPC stores that will take and attempt to resell anything you throw at it, or a universal auction house that would flat out corrupt any attempt at localized economies and eliminate anything resembling a transportation industry.

Thinking in terms of development time, I think that the time that would need to be spent creating and testing a robust system to allow players to create their own items would better be spent creating and testing some other system.

Perhaps it would be better to make it a less "robust" system then? If it's too much effort, simply remove the ability to have it generate Emotes directly. At that point, it's simply something with a name - it doesn't even need a description.

And Onishi, the market I was refering to was the global economy. The ability for players to auto-generate items means that transportation and individual vendors would simply not be effected by this, but I would assume this, like other sandbox style game, would have static auction house/market systems in place in the npc cities. These will be the first things all players use to trade goods, as until we can build buildings and get our own vendors/stores going, we're all running out of the NPC towns.

Due to this, those markets could be instantly flooded to server-crashing capacity by anyone who knows how to hit 'enter'. Thus the global market, the player driven economy, would be adversely effected. It's not no effect, it's not a good effect... all that's left is a bad effect.

Now can this problem be overcome? Sure! You could put in place filters to sort out player made stuff, you could build all sorts of checks and balances to make it work. The point is at that point your taking tons of dev time, and the whole point of this was to save them time.

I like the suggestion of limiting the number of items players can create, I also like the idea of requiring the proper crafting skill to create items, and requiring mats and crafting time to build them as well. At that point all this would be is a alteration of the crafting system they do implement, instead of something extra, and would give the player made items some real in-game worth.

As I've said from the beginning, it's a way to unleash the creativity of the community to develop things that the devs don't have time to develop. They're much more useful with the Emotes, but even without them, players will find ways to have fun with them.

Personally, I don't think that implementing the activated Emotes is really very costly. I am convinced that the amount of time the devs spend on this will be a small fraction of the time the community spends creating new items and using them in the game.

As I've said from the beginning, it's a way to unleash the creativity of the community to develop things that the devs don't have time to develop. They're much more useful with the Emotes, but even without them, players will find ways to have fun with them.

Personally, I don't think that implementing the activated Emotes is really very costly. I am convinced that the amount of time the devs spend on this will be a small fraction of the time the community spends creating new items and using them in the game.

Oh I would love the system if it was done right. Being able to create items that I can utilize for sending our CC's out on quests, or for making tons of in-game events, the whole concept from a GM point of view is amazing. But the potential for abuse is huge, so if it got done it would have to be done with great care.

And Onishi, the market I was refering to was the global economy. The ability for players to auto-generate items means that transportation and individual vendors would simply not be effected by this, but I would assume this, like other sandbox style game, would have static auction house/market systems in place in the npc cities. These will be the first things all players use to trade goods, as until we can build buildings and get our own vendors/stores going, we're all running out of the NPC towns.

Per my envisioning of it, I see no reason for it, a skill/building etc.. could be down the line, but there easily could be a similar system to most games without auction houses, vendor stalls etc... that players could set up etc... which could be run on or offline.

I actually prefer the idea of individual vendor stalls etc... as a whole versus the auction house model capitalized by WoW, even over multiple ones. It grants more individuals the ability for a more cut-throat market, makes it possible for player A, and player B to sell the same item at different prices, while still offering the possibility for the more expensive one to be bought, as well as rewarding the individual player for looking around, taking the time to find the best deal, While allowing people who aren't the best deal in town, to still make profits from the people who don't have the time to find the best deal in town.

One big issue in Auction house games, is you do often wind up with paper thin profit margains, due to the fact that if you can't match the price of the cheapest seller, you can't sell until or unless the cheapest absolutely does sell out 100%.

Now assuming any sort of NPC pawn shops, auction houses etc... It takes no real added effort for created items to simply be exempt from them. The idea of decorative created items, is moot. Assuming they have no cost to create, they have no mass market value. I could see individual ones with purpose, assuming they permitted an unforgable stamp of some sort, so that say I make "tickets to X" and handed them to someone, anyone else looking at the item could know for certain I invited him, but in that context, an NPC middleman would defeat any purpose at all.

Assuming the items were created, there is no reason why a set market style like an auction house (Which I oppose, but if it's implimented so be it), should ever consider dealing in non-functional player created items. While I can envision a handful of uses, I can't imagine a single one that makes a lick of sense going through an NPC middleman.

Did you play SWG at all? That is a similiar market to what I'm refering to. There was the galatic market, where anyone could trade anything. However, if you wanted 'good' gear/items, you had to trek out to player cities and deal directly with the merchants vendors in their stores.

We won't have player cities at the start of the game, nor stores, nor vendors. We'll just be landing in the River Kingdoms and heading out from which ever NPC town our playstyle/alignment focus decides. They have already indicated it's going to be a bare-bones launch, so I'm assuming it could take months before a full player owned vendor system in player buildings takes effect.

Now, maybe they have a totally different plan, I don't know. After all, you know what they say about assumptions...

I think the idea of players being able to create items with home-made names is awesome. I think being able to create a sword, and name it something specific like "Warstein Blade" would be badass for the crafters, being able to 'stamp' their product in the actual name, not some subtext at the bottom of the description.

If I craft books, and I want to create a book called, "Tales of Goblin Love" and write out all the pages and sell it, I should be able to. If I want craft wands, and I want to make a dud stick called, "Bob's Eye Gouger" that has no value, I also should be able to.

Being able to just /CreateWhateverWithNoGuidelines I don't like. Basically, I love player tailored items, but I think it should be handled within the established crafting system.

I think a lot of the problems involved with abuse are reduced if there is both a 'blueprint cost' and production costs associated with each player-made item. People can't flood the markets without significant cost to themselves, and the market exists because it is cheaper to buy player-items from someone who has already blueprinted one than to blueprint it yourself. Blueprinting a new object could also be limited to paid accounts, and potentially revoked on a per-account basis.

Plus, if the item literally just runs a series of commands in the same way a chat macro would, there's no gameplay balance involved. It just becomes a different way to share macros.

Could also be something they add via micro transactions. Five bucks will get you a dozen single-use serial numbers that you can assign to player-made items of your choice. They've already stated much of the micro transaction focus will be on cosmetic items, and this it pretty much the epitome of that.

It sounds like a fun system, provided it can be done without too much time or effort on the designer's part. Definitely not something for launch, but I could see experimenting with it in a couple years.

Did you play SWG at all? That is a similiar market to what I'm refering to. There was the galatic market, where anyone could trade anything. However, if you wanted 'good' gear/items, you had to trek out to player cities and deal directly with the merchants vendors in their stores.

We won't have player cities at the start of the game, nor stores, nor vendors. We'll just be landing in the River Kingdoms and heading out from which ever NPC town our playstyle/alignment focus decides. They have already indicated it's going to be a bare-bones launch, so I'm assuming it could take months before a full player owned vendor system in player buildings takes effect.

and a system I proposed had nothing to do with that at all, there's no shortage of games that have had a simple player is vendor option, usually requiring the player to be logged in, sitting in a city with a sign over their heads and selling goods. Now most of them make the horrendous mistake of putting that anywhere, resulting in huge masses in the populated streets of the major cities.

I'm not saying that is the only way it can be done, I'm saying that is a viable way of which has been done in many MMOs to which I do see some advantages to over an auction house. We don't know there is going to be an auction house, nor do we know that there isn't. I'm saying NPC cities could impliment an auction house, or they could set up a general marketplace area where players put up individual stores. I would categories the pro's and cons of each seperately, but to some people what I see as pros others see as cons, and vice versa.

Like to me, it takes work, asking around and effort to find who in town might be selling X, is a pro, maximises human interaction, adds a layer of depth, a benefit for knowing who manufactures what. To others it's a con, as that gets in the way of their going out and hitting things.

To me, someone rushing in, quickly grabbing the first batch of X's they find, will likely pay more than the person who took the time to search around the market and find the best deal, is a pro.

Quote:

Now, maybe they have a totally different plan, I don't know. After all, you know what they say about assumptions...

I also agree, goblinworks could use either the AH type you suggested, a vendor type like I suggested, or something entirely unique that is outside either of our expectations.

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I want to make a dud stick called, "Bob's Eye Gouger" that has no value, I also should be able to.

Being able to just /CreateWhateverWithNoGuidelines I don't like. Basically, I love player tailored items, but I think it should be handled within the established crafting system.

I'm entirely lacking in the difference here. What danger exists in crafting dud sticks with any name you wish, that dosn't exist in it being a cube, or whatever really. The dud stick and books still have every potential of abuse, offensive language etc... Still would have to be exempt from any NPC based markets etc... a stone platypus or robs StonePlatypusLooking Stick, isn't particularly different

Further possible complications are sanitizing database inputs (as demonstrated here: xkcd.com/327/), as well as the difficulty of images/names. Even if it's just an icon, and obviously offensive item names are filtered, people could have images of body parts with some reasonable sounding name, or a swastika and call it "the real solution". Being displayed as real game items, there are players who if they bumped into these could become extremely offended and blame the game rather than the users. I think making player designed items with nontrivial cost that aren't tradable in large scale markets could be okay, as long as the possible issues are resolved. I for one couldn't be less interested, but I don't see the harm.

Having custom names on crafted items is a concept that I really like. Have a system of predefined words/prefixes/suffixes for players to use - it's not complete freedom but you could have the items floating around without too many worries.

Could also be something they add via micro transactions. Five bucks will get you a dozen single-use serial numbers that you can assign to player-made items of your choice.

That's a great idea!

Waffleyone wrote:

Further possible complications are sanitizing database inputs...

If the database simply stores a literal string which is entered exactly as if the player had typed the exact literal string, this isn't really a problem. And if it allowed any literal command line, then it would be useful as a Performance RP Prop where a player might choose to have a User Object Talisman that casts his spells via a command line, and he chooses not to cast spells if he doesn't possess his Talisman.

I like the idea of using micro-transactions for this. My initial thought was that it's a very good idea only how do you keep "those guys", and make no mistake a few of them will be in this game, who would think it funny to spam create a bunch of X item and either block or otherwise deny access to an object/area or just place obscene words/messages in high traffic areas.

While I believe by using micro-transactions would help limit a number of issues, I think I would like to see a limit as well to the number of items an individual can have "floating" in public spaces. In personal homes or "guild" areas there could be little to no limit so that people can get creative as they want. This goes for items created by another as well. However, items placed "on the ground or out in the open" in public spaces should be limited.

Even with the purchase syetem to make twelve itmes of your choice. There would still be the issue that alot of players new to the genre of sandbox mmo's who's never even heard of muds. Yes emotes are easy to learn and fun to use /Arlock hugs his wife /use wand of eye-gouger to cast cantrip. with so many iteractions changing the enviorment of the game everyday teen's through young adults will not give the time and energy to role-play emotes like 20-30 years ago. They will see in-game items with actual effects more interesting such as a tourch or sword. Not a double sided coin or loaded dice that has no more effect than giving him a random number when he emotes rolling them.

For veteran gamers like mud/ultima/ ETC. Yes would would have lots of fun reminising and interacting with our custom items but for $5.00/for twelve I would not mess with it because I would see it as a run for more money to make my own character items. yes it will be balanced but at what real cost. time for dev's to make and balance the system for maybe 2000 players tops. (my own guestimate) when they are aiming to please 5000 initial gamers on release and an estimated 15000 in the first 3 years. they for one will not have enough time resources and gamer interest even if they did have it they could use those resources to place very limited crafting items in-game for near the same gratification. I love mudd I still jump on and say hi to Mithril once in a blue moon and not one person can say I don't love gamers Role-playing in character ALL the time. I have to agree with Kard I just think it was great but it was very genre specific.

We brought up a different but similar issue in the Smedley topic. Basically SOE is running this system:

https://player-studio.soe.com/ and they are making Everquest Next into a PFO clone.

If there was some way for users to create the visual assets for ivory dice, and perhaps assign them some value, then I could see them being a much more useful item. I don't need an invisible item in my inventory, I can simply type "/rolld6x5 Andius roll's his ivory dice." But if it is accompanied by an item with real value, and ivory dice rolling across the floor or table in front of me... then I might just want some of your ivory dice.

Of course there would need to be some dev oversight to make sure the item's going into the game meet their standard of quality and teen rating of the game. But that's a problem with your system too. If we could create any item we wanted... I could imagine a lot of items going in for people acting out "Fifty Shades of Pathfinder."

Well, my original idea was for player-created images as well. I didn't suggest player-created models, because if the game engine has to render it in the game world - not just in inventory - then it needs to be efficient, and it would take a lot of work to make sure that player-created models were appropriately efficient.

Valve did some process by which player-designed hats ended up in their final product. I'm not sure if what they did is duplicatable, especially since it seems like it would require creating animations which then have to work with the entire set of character models.

At some point it crosses the line between fan-made content and independent contractor working on speculation.

The primary motivation in my making this proposal was to try to come up with a way that the Community could contribute their creativity and hard work to create things that would be both fun and useful in the game.

Well, my original idea was for player-created images as well. I didn't suggest player-created models, because if the game engine has to render it in the game world - not just in inventory - then it needs to be efficient, and it would take a lot of work to make sure that player-created models were appropriately efficient.

But a hell of a lot less effort than programing all those models themselves.

That's a valid concern. However, if the system pulls the names and descriptions from an external server, and only characters who have registered with that server see the descriptions that come from it, then that solves this problem. There are benefits to GW hosting a universal service, but there are pitfalls as well.

However, I would point out that this isn't really unique to this system because even without this system, I'll be able to Emote "Nihimon puts Your Mom's Virtue in a Goblin Baby Diaper and drives off in his 1957 Chevy".

Yes you could emote that, but you wouldn't be able to flood a vendor with 5000 of them, or mail one to everyone on the server, etc. Items and text are different, we're not in MUD days anymore.

Just reading that, I can already imagine tons of Real-Money Traders creating "pamphlets" their bots send to everyone possible that advertise their services. It's bad enough that you always see people advertising RMTing in shouts and getting notes in the mail, but having the advertisements stored on the GW servers as actual items?

Yeah, no... This system sounds nice in theory, but I can't help but agree that there's ways this can be exploited and none of it is fun.

Off hand I forget where I saw it, but didn't Ryan rule out an in-game mail system, thus making the part about mailing characters both pamphlets and items (especially gold as a measure of keeping out many gold farmers) moot?

If someone could find, or knows where that post or portion of the Blog is, could you link it? Thanks!.

Since this was brought back up and now we know they are using Unity I would like to support this request, but under the premise that rather than these items being created in-game they are created via Unity and then could go through some sort of *greenlight* approval process to be added to the game.

This started in another thread, but I really think it deserves its own.

Basically, I'd like GW to consider creating a framework for User Objects that will allow the community to create a lot of fluff that doesn't impact the game directly, rather than having to wait for the developers to find time do create fun little things like Dice.

At their simplest, User Objects should have a user-defined Name, a Text Description, and a list of Methods that can be activated with optional parameters. The Methods would generate Emotes that make it obvious which User Object is being used.

For example:

I type /createUserObject to create a new User Object with Unique ID "CC4317DBD2804E06E04400306EF46656" (a GUID). I am immediately prompted to provide a Name and a Text Description. I enter "Ivory Dice" as the Name, and "A pair of ivory 6-sided dice" as the Text Description.

"Ivory Dice" now exist in my inventory. I should be able to Trade or Sell them just like I would any other item in my inventory.

I would suggest a Display Method for all User Objects that generates an Emote like "Nihimon displays Ivory Dice for all to see." "Ivory Dice" should be a link that displays the Unique ID, the Name, and the Text Description as a tooltip when any player hovers over it.

I should be able to add a Roll Method and define the resulting Emote so that it looks something like "Nihimon rolls Ivory Dice: 7".

The devs spend a little effort building a generally robust Emote system, with special keywords that can be replaced by standard things like your target's name, race, gender, role, etc. and a few things like a random number generator. The players can then build on this system by creating interesting items that have absolutely no real impact on the world or other players, but that can be used as props.

Another example could be a User Object I create named "Nihimon's Mojo". Perhaps some bread-making assassin manages to steal my mojo from me, and he is then able to display it to all his friends to show how cool he is....

Will these dice and harrow cards be usable for running gaming enterprises where people bet coinage?

Nice idea, but as others have mentioned quite prone to abuse. Censoring and removing a lot of material would be quite a lot of work for GW.(I really dont't want to see user created nazi symbols and penises)

If I want craft wands, and I want to make a dud stick called, "Bob's Eye Gouger"

I think you mean, "Tony's Flour-covered Wand of Lie Detecting". ;)

I agree with where this thread is going, I like the idea of player-created MacGuffins which are tied into the crafting system and thus could be included in the economy.

The idea of putting small procedures on the objects, while interesting and nicely MUSH-like, would have to be very limited in practice for an environment where the ratio of moderators to players is less than the typical 1:20 of a MUSH (and the consequences of bad or malicious procedures a lot worse). However, the more I think about it, the more I think it would be possible to design such a system that would be modestly functional and not open to (system) abuse. (Loaded dice and stacked decks of cards are fine of course ;) *puts on his thinking cap and wanders off...*